Ex Voto by Samuel Butler

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EX VOTO: AN ACCOUNT OF THE SACRO MONTE OR NEW JERUSALEM AT VARALLO-SESIA WITH SOME NOTICE OF TABACHETTI'S REMAINING WORK AT THESANCTUARY OF CREA

PREFACE.

The illustrations to this book are mainly collotype photographs byMessrs. Maclure, Macdonald & Co., of Glasgow. Notwithstanding alltheir care, it cannot be pretended that the result is equal to whatwould have been obtained from photogravure; I found, however, that togive anything like an adequate number of photogravures would havemade the book so expensive that I was reluctantly compelled toabandon the idea.

As these sheets leave my hands, my attention is called to a pleasantarticle by Miss Alice Greene about Varallo, that appeared in TheQueen for Saturday, April 21, 1888. The article is very nicelyillustrated, and gives a good idea of the place. Of the Sacro MonteMiss Greene says: --"On the Sacro Monte the tableaux are produced inperpetuity, only the figures are not living, they are terra-cottastatues painted and moulded in so life-like a way that you feel that,were a man of flesh and blood to get mixed up with the crowd behindthe grating, you would have hard work to distinguish him from thefigures that have never had life."

I should wish to modify in some respects the conclusion arrived at onpp. 148, 149, about Michael Angelo Rossetti's having been theprincipal sculptor of the Massacre of the Innocents chapel. Therecan be no doubt that Rossetti did the figure which he has signed, andseveral others in the chapel. One of those which are probably by him(the soldier with outstretched arm to the left of the composition)appears in the view of the chapel that I have given to face page 144,but on consideration I incline against the supposition of my text,i.e., that the signature should be taken as governing the whole work,or at any rate the greater part of it, and lean towards accepting theexternal authority, which, quantum valeat, is all in favour ofParacca. I have changed my mind through an increasing inability toresist the opinion of those who hold that the figures fall into twomain groups, one by the man who did the signed figure, i.e., MichaelAngelo Rossetti; and another, comprising all the most vigorous,interesting, and best placed figures, that certainly appears to be bya much more powerful hand. Probably, then, Rossetti finishedParacca's work and signed one figure as he did, without any idea ofclaiming the whole, and believing that Paracca's predominant sharewas too well known to make mistake about the authorship of the workpossible. I have therefore in the title to the illustration giventhe work to Paracca, but it must be admitted that the question is oneof great difficulty, and I can only hope that some other work ofParacca's may be found which will tend to settle it. I willthankfully receive information about any other such work.

May 1, 1888.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

Unable to go to Dinant before I published "Ex Voto," I have sincebeen there, and have found out a good deal about Tabachetti's family.His real name was de Wespin, and he tame of a family who had beenCopper-beaters, and hence sculptors--for the Flemish copper-beatersmade their own models--for many generations. The family seems tohave been the most numerous and important in Dinant.

The sculptor's grandfather, Perpete de Wespin, was the first to takethe sobriquet of Tabaguet, and though in the deeds which I have seenat Namur the name is always given as "de Wespin," yet the addition of"dit Tabaguet" shows that this last was the name in current use. Hisfather and mother, and a sister Jacquelinne, under age, appear tohave all died in 1587. Jean de Wespin, the sculptor, is mentioned ina deed of that date as "expatrie," and he has a "gardien" or"tuteur," who is to take charge of his inheritance, appointed by theCourt, as though he were for some reason unable to appoint one forhimself. This lends colour to Fassola's and Torrotti's statementthat he lost his reason about 1586 or 1587. I think it more likely,however, considering that he was alive and doing admirable work somefifty years after 1590, that he was the victim of some intrigue thanthat he was ever really mad. At any rate, about 1587 he appears tohave been unable to act for himself.

If his sister Jacquelinne died under age in 1587, Jean is not likelyto have been then much more than thirty, so we may conclude that hewas born about 1560. There is some six or eight years' work by himremaining at Varallo, and described as finished in the 1586 editionof Caccia. Tabachetti, therefore, must have left home very young,and probably went straight to Varallo. In 1586 or 1587 we lose sightof him till 1590 or 1591, when he went to Crea, where he did aboutforty chapels--almost all of which have perished.

On again visiting Milan I found in the Biblioteca Nazionale a guide-book to the Sacro Monte, which was not in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana,and of whose existence I had never heard. This guide-book waspublished in 1606 and reissued in 1610; it mentions all changes since1590, and even describes chapels not yet in existence, but it saysnothing about Tabachetti's First Vision of St. Joseph chapel--theonly one of his chapels not given as completed in the 1590 edition ofCaccia. I had assumed too hastily that this chapel was done justafter the 1590 edition of Caccia had been published, and just beforeTabachetti left for Crea in 1590 or 1591, whereas it now appears thatit was done about 1610, during a short visit paid by the sculptor toVarallo some twenty years after he had left it.

Finding that Tabachetti returned to Varallo about 1610, I was able tounderstand two or three figures in the Ecce Homo chapel which I hadlong thought must be by Tabachetti, but had not ventured to ascribeto him, inasmuch as I believed him to have finally left Varallo sometwenty years before the Ecce Homo chapel was made. I have now nodoubt that he lent a hand to Giovanni D'Enrico with this chapel, inwhich he has happily left us his portrait signed with a V (doubtlessstanding for W, a letter which the Italians have not got), cut on thehat before baking, and invisible from outside the chapel.

Signor Arienta had told me there was a seal on the back of a figurein the Journey to Calvary chapel; on examining this I found it toshow a W, with some kind of armorial bearings underneath. I have notbeen able to find anything like these arms, of which I give a sketchherewith: they have no affinity with those of the de Wespin family,unless the cups with crosses under them are taken as modifications ofthe three-footed caldrons which were never absent from the arms ofDinant copper-beaters. Tabachetti (for I shall assume that the sealwas placed by him) perhaps sealed this figure as an afterthought in1610, being unable to cut easily into the hard-baked clay, and if hecould have Italianised the W he would probably have done so. Ishould say that I arrived at the Ecce Homo figure as a portrait ofTabachetti before I found the V cut upon the hat; I found the V onexamining the portrait to see if I could find any signature. Itstands next to a second portrait of Leonardo da Vinci by GaudenzioFerrari, taken into the Ecce Homo chapel, doubtless, on thedemolition of some earlier work by Gaudenzio on or near the samesite. I knew of this second portrait of Leonardo da Vinci when Ipublished my first edition, but did not venture to say anything aboutit, as thinking that one life-sized portrait of a Leonardo da Vinciby a Gaudenzio Ferrari was as much of a find at one time as myreaders would put up with. I had also known of the V on Tabachetti'shat, but, having no idea that his name was de Wespin, had not seenwhy this should help it to be a portrait of Tabachetti, and hadallowed the fact to escape me.

The figure next to Scotto in the Ecce Homo chapel is, I do not doubt,a portrait of Giovanni D'Enrico. This may explain the tradition atVarallo that Scotto is Antonio D'Enrico, which cannot be. Next toGiovanni D'Enrico stands the second Leonardo da Vinci, and next toLeonardo, as I have said, Tabachetti. In the chapel by Gaudenzio,from which they were taken, the figures of Leonardo and Scottoprobably stood side by side as they still do in the Crucifixionchapel. I supposed that Tabachetti and D'Enrico, who must haveperfectly well known who they were, separated them in order to getGiovanni D'Enrico nearer the grating. It was the presumption that wehad D'Enrico's portrait between Scotto and Leonardo, and theconviction that Tabachetti also had worked in the chapel, that led meto examine the very beautiful figure on the father side of Leonardoto see if I could find anything to confirm my suspicion that it was aportrait of Tabachetti himself.

I do not think there can be much doubt that the Vecchietto is also aportrait of Tabachetti done some thirty years later than 1610, noryet do I doubt, now I know that he returned to Varallo in 1610, thatthe figures of Herod and of Caiaphas are by him. I believe he alsoat this time paid a short visit to Orta, and did three or fourfigures in the left hand part of the foreground of the Canonisationof St. Francis chapel. At Montrigone, a mile or so below Borgo-Sesiastation, I believe him to have done at least two or three figures,which are very much in his manner, and not at all like either GiacomoFerro or Giovanni D'Enrico, to whom they are usually assigned. Thesefigures are some twenty-five years later than 1610, and tend to showthat Tabachetti, as an old man of over seventy, paid a third visit tothe Val-Sesia.

The substance of the foregoing paragraphs is published at greaterlength, and with illustrations, in the number of the Universal Reviewfor November 1888, and to which I must refer my readers. I have,however, here given the pith of all that I have yet been able to findout about Tabachetti since "Ex Voto" was published. I should like toadd the following in regard to other chapels.

Signor Arienta has found a 1523 scrawled on the frescoes of theCrucifixion chapel. I do not think this shows necessarily that thework was more than begun at that date. He has also found a monogram,which we believe to be Gaudenzio Ferrari's, on the central shieldwith a lion on it, given in the illustration facing p. 210. Onfurther consideration, I feel more and more inclined to think thatthe frescoes in this chapel have been a good deal retouched.

I hardly question that the Second Vision of St. Joseph chapel is byTabachetti, as also the Woman of Samaria. The Christ in this lastchapel is a restoration. In a woodcut of 1640 the position of thefigures is reversed, but nothing more than the positions.

Lastly, the Virgin's mother does not have eggs east of Milan. It isa Valsesian custom to give eggs beaten up with wine and sugar towomen immediately on their confinement, and I am told that the eggsdo no harm though not according to the rules. I am told thatValsesian influence must always be suspected when the Virgin's motheris having eggs.

November 30, 1888.

Note.--A copy of this postscript can be easily inserted into a boundcopy, and will be forwarded by Messrs. TRUBNER & Co. on receipt ofstamped and addressed envelope.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.

In the preface to "Alps and Sanctuaries" I apologised for passingover Varallo-Sesia, the most important of North Italian sanctuaries,on the ground that it required a book to itself. This book I willnow endeavour to supply, though well aware that I can onlyimperfectly and unworthily do so. To treat the subject in the detailit merits would be a task beyond my opportunities; for, in spite ofevery endeavour, I have not been able to see several works anddocuments, without which it is useless to try and unravel the earlierhistory of the sanctuary. The book by Caccia, for example, publishedby Sessali at Novara in 1565, and reprinted at Brescia in 1576, issure to turn up some day, but I have failed to find it at Varallo,Novara (where it appears in the catalogue, but not on the shelves),Milan, the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Bodleian Library.Through the kindness of Sac. Ant. Ceriani, I was able to learn thatthe Biblioteca Ambrosiana possessed what there can be little doubt isa later edition of this book, dated 1587, but really published at theend of 1586, and another dated 1591, to which Signor Galloni in his"Uomini e fatti celebri di Valle-Sesia" (p. 110) has called attentionas the first work ever printed at Varallo. But the last eight of thetwenty-one years between 1565 and 1586 were eventful, and much couldbe at once seen by a comparison of the 1565, 1576, and 1586 [1587]editions, about which speculation is a waste of time while theearlier works are wanting. I have been able to gather two or threeinteresting facts by a comparison of the 1586 and 1591 editions, anddo not doubt that the date, for example, of Tabachetti's advent toVarallo and of his great Calvary Chapel would be settled within avery few years if the missing books were available.

Another document which I have in vain tried to see is the plan of theSacro Monte as it stood towards the close of the sixteenth century,made by Pellegrino Tibaldi with a view to his own proposedalterations. He who is fortunate enough to gain access to this plan--which I saw for a few minutes in 1884, but which is now no longer atVarallo--will find a great deal made clear to him which he willotherwise be hardly able to find out. Over and above the foregoing,there is the inventory drawn up by order of Giambattista Albertino in1614, and a number of other documents, to which reference will befound in the pages of Bordiga, Galloni, Tonetti, and of the manyothers who have written upon the Val Sesia and its history. A twelvemonths' stay in the Val Sesia would not suffice to do justice to allthe interesting and important questions which arise wholesale as soonas the chapels on the Sacro Monte are examined with any care. Ishall confine myself, therefore, to a consideration of the mostremarkable features of the Sacro Monte as it exists at present, andto doing what I can to stimulate further study on the part of others.

I cannot understand how a field so interesting, and containingtreasures in so many respects unrivalled, can have remained almostwholly untilled by the numerous English lovers of art who yearlyflock to Italy; but the fact is one on which I may perhaps becongratulated, inasmuch as more shortcomings and errors of judgmentmay be forgiven in my own book, in virtue of its being the first tobring Varallo with any prominence before English readers. Thatlittle is known about the Sacro Monte, even by the latest and bestreputed authorities on art, may be seen by turning to Sir HenryLayard's recent edition of Kugler's "Handbook of Painting,"--a workwhich our leading journals of culture have received with acclamation.Sir Henry Layard has evidently either never been at Varallo, or hasso completely forgotten what he saw there that his visit no longercounts. He thinks, for example, that the chapels, or, as he alsocalls them, "stations" (which in itself should show that he has notseen them), are on the way up to the Sacro Monte, whereas all thatneed be considered are on the top. He thinks that the statuesgenerally in these supposed chapels "on the ascent of the SacroMonte" are attributed to Gaudenzio Ferrari, whereas it is only in twoor three out of some five-and-forty that any statues are believed tobe by Gaudenzio. He thinks the famous sculptor Tabachetti--forfamous he is in North Italy, where he is known--was a painter, andspeaks of him as "a local imitator" of Gaudenzio, who "decorated"other chapels, and "whose works only show how rapidly Gaudenzio'sinfluence declined and his school deteriorated." As a matter offact, Tabachetti was a Fleming and his name was Tabaquet; but this isa detail. Sir Henry Layard thinks that "Miel" was also "a localimitator" of Gaudenzio. It is not likely that this painter everworked on the Sacro Monte at all; but if he did, Sir Henry Layardshould surely know that he came from Antwerp. Sir Henry Layard doesnot appear to know that there are any figures in the CrucifixionChapel of Gaudenzio, or indeed in any of the chapels for whichGaudenzio painted frescoes, and falls into a trap which seems almostlaid on purpose for those who would write about Varallo withouthaving been there, in supposing that Gaudenzio painted a Pieta on theSacro Monte. Having thus displayed the ripeness of his knowledge asregards facts, he says that though the chapels "on the ascent of theSacro Monte" are "objects of wonder and admiration to the innumerablepilgrims who frequent this sacred spot," yet "the bad taste of thecolour and clothing make them highly repugnant to a cultivated eye."

I begin to understand now how we came to buy the Blenheim Raffaelle.

Finally, Sir Henry Layard says it is "very doubtful" whether any ofthe statues were modelled or executed by Gaudenzio Ferrari at all.It is a pity he has not thought it necessary give a single reason orauthority in support of a statement so surprising.

Some of these blunders appear in the edition of 1874 edited by LadyEastlake. In that edition the writer evidently knows nothing of anyfigures in the Crucifixion Chapel, and Sir Henry Layard was unable tosupply the omission. The writer in the 1874 edition says that"Gaudenzio is seen as a modeller of painted terra-cotta in thestations ascending to the chapel (sic) on the Sacro Monte." It isfrom this source that Sir Henry Layard got his idea that the chapelsare on the way up to the Sacro Monte, and that they are distinct fromthose for which Gaudenzio painted frescoes on the top of themountain. Having perhaps seen photographs of the Sacro Monte atVarese, where the chapels climb the hill along with the road, orhaving perhaps actually seen the Madonna del Sasso at Locarno, wheresmall oratories with frescoes of the Stations of the Cross are placedon the ascent, he thought those at Varallo might as well remain onthe ascent also, and that it would be safe to call them "stations."It is the writer in the 1874 edition who first gave him or her selfairs about a cultivated eye; but he or she had the grace to put in asaving clause to the effect that the designs in some instances were"full of grace." True, Sir Henry Layard has never seen the designs;nevertheless his eye is too highly cultivated to put up with thisclause; so it has disappeared, to make room, I suppose, for thesentence in which so much accurate knowledge is displayed in respectto Tabachetti and Miel d'Anvers. Sir Henry Layard should keep to thegood old plan of saying that the picture would have been better ifthe artist had taken more pains, and praising the works of PietroPerugino. Personally, I confess I am sorry he has never seen theSacro Monte. If he has trod on so many ploughshares without havingseen Varallo, what might he not have achieved in the plenitude of ataste which has been cultivated in every respect save that of notpretending to know more than one does know, if he had actually beenthere, and seen some one or two of the statues themselves?

I have only sampled Sir Henry Layard's work in respect of two otherpainters, but have found no less reason to differ from him there thanhere. I refer to his remarks about Giovanni and Gentile Bellini. Imust reserve the counter-statement of my own opinion for anotherwork, in which I shall hope to deal with the real and supposedportraits of those two great men. I will, however, take the presentopportunity of protesting against a sentence which caught my eye inpassing, and which I believe to be as fundamentally unsound as any Iever saw written, even by a professional art critic or by a directorof a national collection. Sir Henry Layard, in his chapter onLeonardo da Vinci, says -

"One thing prominently taught us by the works of Leonardo andRaffaelle, of Michael Angelo and Titian, is distinctly this--thatpurity of morals, freedom of institutions, and sincerity of faithhave nothing to do with excellence in art."

I should prefer to say, that if the works of the four artists abovementioned show one thing more clearly than another, it is thatneither power over line, nor knowledge of form, nor fine sense ofcolour, nor facility of invention, nor any of the marvellous giftswhich three out of the four undoubtedly possessed, will make anyman's work live permanently in our affections unless it is rooted insincerity of faith and in love towards God and man. More briefly, itis [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], or the spirit, and not[Greek text which cannot be reproduced], or the letter, which is thesoul of all true art. This, it should go without saying, applies tomusic, literature, and to whatever can be done at all. If it hasbeen done "to the Lord"--that is to say, with sincerity and freedomfrom affectation--whether with conscious effusion, as by Gaudenzio,or with perhaps robuster unconsciousness, as by Tabachetti, a halowill gather round it that will illumine it though it pass through thevalley of the shadow of death itself. If it has been done in self-seeking, as, exceptis excipiendis, by Leonardo, Titian, MichaelAngelo, and Raffaelle, it will in due course lose hold and power inproportion to the insincerity with which it was tainted.

CHAPTER II. THE REV. S. W. KING--LANZI AND LOMAZZO.

Leaving Sir Henry Layard, let us turn to one of the few Englishwriters who have given some attention to Varallo--I mean to the Rev.S. W. King's delightful work "The Italian Valleys of the PennineAlps." This author says -

"When we first visited Varallo, it was comparatively little known totravellers, but we now found that of late years many more hadfrequented it, and its beautiful scenery and great attractions werebecoming more generally and deservedly appreciated. Independently ofits own picturesque situation, and its advantages as head-quartersfor exploring the neighbouring Vals and their romantic scenery, theworks which it possesses of the ancient and famous Val Sesian schoolof painters and modellers are most interesting. At the head of themstands first and foremost Gaudenzio Ferrari, whose original andmasterly productions ought to be far more widely known and studiedthan they as yet are; and some of the finest of them are to be foundin the churches and Sacro Monte of Varallo" (p. 498).

Of the Sacro Monte the same writer says -

"No situation could have been more happily chosen for the purposeintended than the little mountain rising on the north of Varallo to aheight of about 270 feet"--[this is an error; the floor of the churchon the Sacro Monte is just 500 feet above the bridge over theMastallone]--"on which the chapels, oratories, and convents of thatextraordinary creation the New Jerusalem are grouped together.Besides the beauty of the site and its convenient proximity to a townlike Varallo of some 3000 inhabitants, the character of the mountainis exactly adapted for the effective disposition of the various'stations' of which it consists"--[it does not consist of"stations"]--"and on this account chiefly it was selected by thefounder, the 'Blessed Bernardino Caimo.' A Milanese of noble family,and Vicar of the Convent of the Minorites in Milan, and also inconnection with that of Varallo, he was specially commissioned byPope Sixtus IV. to visit the Sepulchre and other holy places inPalestine, and while there took the opportunity of making copies anddrawings, with the intention of erecting a facsimile of them in hisnative country. On his return to Italy in 1491, after examining allthe likely sites within reasonable distance of Milan, he found theconical hills of the Val Sesia the best adapted for his design, andfixed upon Varallo as the spot; being probably specially attracted toit from the fact of the convent and church of Sta. Maria delleGrazie, already described, having been conveyed through him to the'Minori Osservanti,' as appears from a brief of Innocent VIII., datedDecember 21, 1486."

Mr. King does not give the source from which he derived his knowledgeof the existence of this act, and I have not come across a notice ofit elsewhere, except a brief one in Signor Galloni's work (p. 71),and a reference to it in the conveyance of April 14, 1493. ButSignor Arienta of Varallo, whose industry in collecting materials fora history of the Sacro Monte cannot be surpassed, showed me atranscript from an old plan of the church of S. Maria delle Grazie,in which the inscription on Bernardino Caimi's grave was given--aninscription which (so at least I understood Signor Arienta to say) isnow covered by an altar which had been erected on the site of thegrave. The inscription ran:-

It would thus appear that the Sacro Monte was founded four yearsearlier than the received date. The formal deed of conveyance of thesite on the mountain from the town to Bernardino Caimi was not signedtill the 14th of April 1493; but the work had been already commenced,as is shown by the inscription still remaining over the reproductionof the Holy Sepulchre, which is dated the 17th of October 1491.Probably the work was contemplated in 1486, and interrupted by B.Caimi's return to Jerusalem in 1487, not to be actively resumed till1490.

"The first stone," says Mr. King, "was laid by Scarognini, a Milanese'magnifico,' who cordially entered into the scheme; and at hisexpense the Holy Sepulchre was completed, and a hospice attached,where the founder and a number of Franciscan brothers came to residein 1493. Caimo had planned a vast extension of this commencement,but died within three years, leaving his designs to be carried out byhis successors."

. . .

"Each oratory contains a group--in some very numerous--of figuresmodelled in terra-cotta the size of life or larger; many of them ofgreat merit as works of art, others very inferior and mere rubbish.The figures are coloured and occasionally draped with appropriateclothing, the resemblance to life being heightened by the addition ofhuman hair"--[which, by the way, is always horse-hair]--"and theeffect is often very startling. Each chapel represents a different'mystery,' and, beside the modelled figures, the walls are decoratedwith frescoes. The front of each is open to the air, all but a wiregrating, through apertures in which the subject may be perfectly seenin the position intended by the designer" (pp. 510-512).

Mr. King says, correctly, that Gaudenzio's earliest remaining work onthe Sacro Monte is the Chapel of the Pieta, that originally containedthe figures of Christ bearing the cross, but from which the modelledfigures were removed, others being substituted that had no connectionwith the background. I do not know, however, that Christ wasactually carrying the cross in the chapel as it originally stood.The words of the 1587 edition of Caccia (?) stand, "Come il N.S. fuspogliato de suoi panni, e condotto sopra il Monte Calvario, ch' efatto di bellissimo e ben inteso relievo."

"The frescoes on the wall," he continues, "are particularlyinteresting, as having been painted by him at the early age ofnineteen"--[Mr. King supposes Gaudenzio Ferrari to have been born in1484]--"when his ambition to share in the glory and renown of thegreat work was gratified by this chapel being intrusted to him; aproof of his early talent and the just appreciation of it. Thefrescoes are much injured, but of the chief one there is enough toshow its excellence. On one side is St. John, with clasped handsgazing upwards in grief, and the two Marys sorrowing, as a soldier inthe centre seems to forbid their following further; his helmet isembossed and gilt as in the instances in the Franciscan church, whilethe two thieves are led bound by a figure on horseback."

These frescoes appear to me to have been not so much restored asrepainted--that is to say, where they are not almost entirely gone.The green colour that now prevails in the shadows and half-tones isalien to Gaudenzio, and cannot be accepted as his. I should say,however, that my friend Signor Arienta of Varallo differs from me onthis point. At any rate, the work is now little more than a ruin,and the terra-cotta Pieta is among the least satisfactory groups onthe Sacro Monte. Mr. King continues:-

"In the Chapel of the Adoration of the Magi we have a work of highermerit, giving evidence of his studies under Raphael."

Here Mr. King is in some measure mistaken. The frescoes in the MagiChapel are indeed greatly finer than those in the present Pieta, butthey were painted from thirty to forty years later, when Gaudenziowas in his prime, and it is to years of intervening incessant effortand practice, not to any study under Raphael, that the enlargement ofstyle and greater freedom of design is due. Gaudenzio never studiedunder Raphael; he may have painted for him, and perhaps did so--noone knows whether he did or did not--but in every branch of his arthe was incomparably Raphael's superior, and must have known itperfectly well.

Returning to Mr. King, with whom, in the main, I am in cordialsympathy, we read:-

"The group of ten figures in terra-cotta represents the three kingsjust arrived with their immediate attendants, and alighting at thedoor of an inner recess, where a light burns over the manger ofBethlehem, and in which is a simple but exquisite group of St.Joseph, the Virgin, and Child. On the walls of the chapel arepainted in fresco a crowd of followers, the varieties of whosecostumes, attitudes, and figures are most cleverly portrayed. Inmodelling the horses which form part of the central group, Ferrariwas assisted by his pupil Fermo Stella."--[Fermo Stella is not knownto have been a pupil of Gaudenzio's, and was probably established asa painter before Gaudenzio began to work at all.]--"But the greatestof all Gaudenzio's achievements is the large chapel of theCrucifixion, a work of the most extraordinary character and masterlyexecution. His first design for the subject, on the screen of theMinorite Church, he has here carried out in life-like figures interra-cotta; twenty-six of which form the centre group, embodying theevents of the Passion; while round the walls are depicted withwonderful power a crowd of spectators, numbering some 150, most ofwhom are gazing at the central figure of the Saviour on the cross.The variety of expression, costume, and character is almost infinite.Round the roof are twenty angels in the most varied and gracefulattitudes, deserving of special attention; and also a hideous figureof Lucifer."

Gaudenzio's devils are never quite satisfactory. His angels aredivine, and no one can make them cry as he does. When my friend Mr.H. Festing Jones met a lovely child crying in the streets of Varallolast summer, he said it was crying like one of Gaudenzio's angels;and so it was. Gaudenzio was at home with everything human, and evensuperhuman, if beautiful; if it was only a case of dealing with ugly,wicked, and disagreeable people, he knew all about this, and couldpaint them if the occasion required it; but when it came to adownright unmitigated devil, he was powerless. He could never havedone Tabachetti's serpent in the Adam and Eve Chapel, nor yet theplausible fair-spoken devil, as in the Temptation Chapel, also byTabachetti.

To conclude my extracts from Mr. King. Speaking of the CrucifixionChapel, he says:-

"Though this combination of terra-cotta and fresco may not be ashighly esteemed in the present day as in the times when thisextraordinary sanctuary sprang into existence, yet this compositionmust always be admired as one of the greatest of Ferrari's works, andundoubtedly that on which he lavished the full force of his geniusand the collected studies and experience of his previous artistlife."

It is noteworthy, but not perhaps surprising, that this observant,intelligent, and sympathetic writer, probably through inability to atonce understand and enter into the conventions rendered necessary bythe conditions under which works so unfamiliar to him must be bothexecuted and looked at, has failed to notice the existence ofTabachetti, never mentioning his name nor referring to one of hisworks--not even to the Madonna and Child in the church of S.Gaudenzio, which one would have thought could hardly fail to strikehim.

* * *

Mr. King has elsewhere in his work referred both to Lanzi and toLomazzo in support of his very high opinion of Gaudenzio Ferrari; itmay, therefore, be as well to give extracts from each of thesewriters. Lanzi says:-

"If we examine into further particulars of his style, we shall findFerrari's warm and lively colouring so superior to that of theMilanese artists of his day, that we shall have no difficulty inrecognising it in the churches where he painted; the eye of thespectator is directly attracted towards it; his carnations arenatural and varied according to his subjects; his draperies displaymuch fancy and originality, with middle tints blended so skilfully asto equal the most beautiful produced by any other artist. And, if wemay say so,--he succeeded in representing the minds even better thanthe forms of his subjects. He particularly studied this branch ofthe art, and we seldom observe more marked attitudes or moreexpressive . . . As Lomazzo, however, has dwelt so much at length onhis admirable skill both in painting and modelling, it would be idleto insist on it further. But I ought to add that it is a greatreflection upon Vasari that he did not better know or better estimatesuch an artist; so that foreigners who form their opinions only fromhistory are left unacquainted with his merit, and have uniformlyneglected to do him justice in their writings."

Lomazzo says:-

"Now amongst the worthy painters who excelled herein, Raph. Urbinewas not the least who performed his workes with a divine kind ofmaiesty; neither was Polidore"--[Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio]--"much behind him in his kinde, whose pictures seemed as it werepassing furious; nor yet Andreas Mantegna, whose vaine showed a verylaborious curiositie; nor yet Leonard Vincent"--[Leonardo da Vinci]--"in whose doings there was never any error found in this point.Wherof amongst all other of his works, that admirable last supper ofChrist in Refect. S. Maria de Gratia in Milane maketh most evidentproofe, in which he hath so lively expressed the passions of theApostles mindes in their countenances and the rest of their bodies,that a man may boldly say the truth was nothing superior to hisrepresentation, and neede not be afraide to reckon it among the bestworks of oyle-painting (of which kind of painting John de Bruges wasthe first inventor). For in those Apostles you might distinctlyperceive admiration, feare, griefe, suspition, love, &c.; all whichwere sometimes to be seen together in one of them, and finally inJudas a treason-plotting countenance, as it were the very truecounterfiet of a traitor. So that therein he has left a sufficientargument of his rare perfection, in the true understanding of thepassions of the mind exemplified outwardly in the bodie. Whichbecause it is the most necessary part of painting, I purpose (as Isay) to handle in this present booke. I may not omit Mi. Angelo inany case, whose skill and painfulnesse in this point was so greate,that his pictures carry with them more hard motions expressed afteran unusual manner, but all of them tending to a certaine bouldstoutnesse. And as for Titian, he hath worthely purchased the nameof a great painter in this matter, as his pictures do sufficientlywitness; in each whereof there shineth a certain mooving vertue,seeming to incite the beholder unto the imitation thereof. Of whomthis saying may well be verified, that he was beloved of the worldand envied of nature.

"Finally, mine old Master Gaudentius (though he be not much knowne)was inferior unto fewe, in giving the apt motions to the Saintes andAngels; who was not onely a very witty painter (as I have elsewhereshowed), but also a most profound philosopher and mathematician.Amongst all whose all-praiseworthy workes (which are almost infinite,especially in this point of motion) there are divers mysteries ofChriste's passion, of his doing, but chiefly a crucifix called MountCalvary at the Sepulchre of Varallo; where he hath made admirablehorses and strange angels, not only in painting, but also inplasticke, of a kinde of earth wrought most curiously with his ownhand cleane rounde"--[di tutto rilievo]--"through all the figures.

"Besides in the vault of the Chappell of S. Mary de Gratia in Milanehe hath wrought most naturall angels, I meane especially for theiractions; there is also that mighty cube of St. Mary de Serono, theCupola of S. Maria at Saronno, full of thrones of angells set outwith actions and habites of all sortes, carrying diversity of moststrange instruments in their hands. I may not conceal that goodlychapel which he made in his latter time, in the Church of Peace inMilan, where you shall find small histories of our Lady and Joachimeshowing such superexcellent motions that they seem much to revive andanimate the spectators.

"Moreover, the story of S. Roccho done by him in Vercelli, withdivers workes in that city; although indeede almost all Lombardy beadorned with his most rare workes, I will not conceal one saying,which was that all painters delight to steale other men's inventions,but that he himself was in no great danger of being detected of thefthereafter. Now this great painter, although in reason he might forhis discretion, wisedome, and worth be compared with the above namedin the first booke, cap. 29, yet notwithstanding is he omitted byGeorge Vasary in his lives of the famous painters, carvers, andarchitects. An argument, to say no worse of him, that he intended toeternise only his own Tuscanes. But I proceede to the unfoulding ofthe originall causes of these motions. And first for our betterunderstanding I will beginne with those passions of the mind wherebythe body is mooved to the performance of his particular effects"(Id., Book ii. pp. 7, 8).

What Gaudenzio said was that all painters were fond of stealing, butthat they were pretty sure to be found out sooner or later.

For my own part, I should like to say that I prefer Giovanni Bellinito Gaudenzio; but unless Giotto and Giorgione, I really do not knowwho the Italian painters should stand before him. Bernardino Luiniruns him close, but great as Bernardino Luini was, Gaudenzio, inspite of not a little mannerism, was greater.

The passage above referred to by Lomazzo as from his twenty-ninthchapter runs:-

"Now if any man be desirous to learne the most exact and smallestparts of these proportions, together with the way how to transferthem from one body to another, I refer him to the works of Le.Vincent, Bramante, Vincentius Foppa, Barnard Zenale; and for printsto Albert Durer, Hispill Peum, &c. And out of mine owne workes hemay gather that I have endeavoured if not performed theseproportions, done according to these rules; which all the best andfamous painters of our time have likewise observed; who have alsoattained to the exquisite proportions of the seven planets. Amongstwhom Mi. Angelo hath merited the chiefest commendation; next himRaph. Urbine was famous for making of delicate and Venereall bodies;Leon. Vincent for expressing of solary bodies; Polidore Caldara ofCaravaggio for Martiall bodies; Titianus Vecellino for Lunaryes; andGaudentius Ferrato da Valdugia a Milaner for Jovialistes" (55 Bk. i.p. 117).

Having been compelled to look through the greater part of Lomazzo'swork, inasmuch as not one of the several writers who have referred tohis high opinion of Gaudenzio has given chapter and page, I wouldfain allow myself to linger somewhat in the fascinating paths intowhich my subject has led me. I should like to call further attentionto this forgotten work as "Englished" by one Richard Haydocke,"Student in Physik," and dedicated to no less a person than "to theRight Worshipful Thomas Bodley, Esq.," whose foundation of thelibrary that bears his name is referred to in the preface. Gladlywould I tell him about Alexander the Great, who, being overmatched byhis enemies in India, "was seen to reake forth from his bodie fierand light;" and of the father of Theodoricus, who, "by the likevehement effect, breathed out of his heart, as from a burningfurnace, fierce sparkels; which flying forth, shone, and made a soundin the aire." I should like to explain to him about the motions ofthe seven planets which are the seven governours of the world, andhow Saturn "causeth a complexion of colour between blacke andyeallowe, meager, distorted, of an harde skinne, eminent vaines, anhairie bodie, small eies, eie brows joyned together &c.," and how "hemaketh a man subtle, wittie, a way-layer, and murtherer;" how, again,Jupiter is "magnipotent, good natured, fortunate, sweete, pleasant,the best wel-willer, honest, neate, of a good gate, honorable, theauthor of mirth and judgement, wise, true, the revealer of truth, thechiefe judge, exceeding all the planets in goodnesse, the bestower ofriches and wisedome;" how Mars "broaches bould spirites, bloud,brawles and all disordered, inconsiderate, and headdy actions;" how"his gestures are terrible, cruell, fierce, angry, proude, hasty andviolent," and how also "he is reputed hoat and drie in the highestdegree, bearing sway over redde choler." I should like to tell himabout the passions, actions, and the gestures they occasion,described as they are with a sweet and silly unreasonableness that isvery charming to read, and makes no demand whatever upon theunderstanding. But charming as are the pages of Lomazzo, those ofTorrotti are more charming still, and they have a connection with oursubject which Lomazzo's have not. Enough, therefore, that Mr.Haydocke did not get through more than half Lomazzo's treatise, andthat, glancing over the untranslated pages, I see frequent allusionsto Gaudenzio in the warmest terms, but no passage so important as thelonger of the two quoted above.

CHAPTER III. VARALLO, PAST AND PRESENT.

Now that Varallo can be easily reached by the new railway fromNovara, it is not likely to remain so little known much longer. Thetown is agreeable to stay in; it contains three excellent inns. Iname them in geographical order. They are the Italia, the CroceBianca, and the Posta, while there is another not less excellent onthe Sacro Monte itself. I have stayed at all these inns, and havereceived so much kindness in each of them, that I must decline theinvidious task of recommending any one of them especially. My bookis intended for Varallo, and not for this or that hotel. Theneighbourhood affords numberless excursions, all of them full ofinterest and beauty; the town itself, though no exception to the rulethat the eastern cities of North Italy are more beautiful than thewestern, is still full of admirable subjects for those who are fondof sketching. The people are hospitable to a fault; personally, Iowe them the greatest honour that has ever been conferred upon me--anhonour far greater than any I have ever received among those who knowme better, and are probably better judges of my deserts. The climateis healthy, the nights being cool even in the height of summer, andthe days almost invariably sunny and free from fog in winter. Withall these advantages, therefore, it is not easy to understand theneglect that has befallen it, except on the ground that until latelyit has been singularly difficult of access.

Two hundred years ago it must have been much as it is at present.Turning to the work of the excellent Canon Torrotti, published in1686, I find he writes as follows:-

"Oh, what fannings is there not here," he exclaims, "of the assiduousZephyrs; what warmth in winter, what gelidness of the air in summer;and what freaks are there not of Nature by way of caves, grottoes,and delicious chambers hewn by her own hand. Here can be enjoyedwines of the very finest flavour, trout as dainty as can be caught inany waters, game of the most singular excellence; in short, there ishere a great commodity of everything most sensual and pleasing to thepalate. And of those who come here, above all I must praise thePiedmontese, who arrive in frequent cavalcades of from twenty tofive-and-twenty people, to an edification which is beyond all praise;and they are munificent in the gifts they leave behind them to theHoly Place--not resembling those who are mean towards God though theywill spend freely enough upon their hotel-bill. Carriages of allsorts can be had here easily; it is the Milanese who for the mostpart make use of these carriages and equipages, for they are pompousand splendid in their carryings on. From elsewhither processionsarrive daily, even from Switzerland, and there are sometimes as manyas ten thousand visitors extraordinary come here in a single day, yetis there no hindrance but they find comfortable lodging, and at veryreasonable prices.

"As for the distance, it is about sixty miles, or two easy days'journey from Milan; it is much the same from Turin; it is one dayfrom Novara, and one from Vercelli; but the most delightful thingabout this journey is that you can combine so many other devotionsalong with it. In the Milanese district, for example, there is themountain of Varese, and that of S. Carlo of Arona on the LagoMaggiore; and there are S. Francesco and S. Giulio on the Lagod'Orta; then there is the Madonna of Oropa in the mountains ofBiella, which sanctuary is in the diocese of Vercelli, as is also S.Giovanni di Campiglio, the Madonna di Crevacore, and Gattinara; thereis also the Mount Calvary of Domo d'Ossola, on the road towardsSwitzerland, and Montrigone below Borgosesia. These, indeed, are butchapels in imitation of our own Holy Sepulchre, and cannot comparewith it neither in opulence nor in importance; still those of Vareseand Oropa are of some note and wealth. Moreover, the neighbourhoodof this our own Jerusalem is the exact counterpart of that which isin the Holy Land, having the Mastallone on the one side for the brookKedron, and the Sesia for the Jordan, and the lake of Orta for thatof Caesaraea; while for the Levites there are the fathers of St.Bernard of Mentone in the Graian and Pennine Alps of Aosta, wherethere are so many Roman antiquities that they may be contemplated notonly as monuments of empire, but as also of the vanity of all humangreatness" (pp. 19-21).

A little later the Canon tells us of the antiquity of the councilsthat have been held in the neighbourhood, and of one especially:-

"Which was held secretly by five bishops on the summit of one of themountains of Sorba in the Val Rassa, which is still hence called thebishops' seat; for they came thither as to the place where the fivedioceses adjoined, and each one sat on a stone within the boundary ofhis own diocese; and they are those of Novara, Vercelli, Ivrea, Orta,and Sion. Nor must we forget the signal service rendered to theuniversal church in these same mountains of Rassa by the discomfitureof the heretic monks Gazzari to which end Pope Clement V. in 1307issued several bulls, and among them one bearing date on the thirdday of the ides of August, given at Pottieri, in which he confirmedthe liberty of our people, and acknowledged the Capi as Counts of theChurch . . . For the Valsesian people have been ever free, and byGod's grace have shaken off the yoke of usurpers while continuingfaithful and profitable subjects of those who have equitablyprotected them."

Torrotti goes on to tell us about the Blessed shepherdess Panesia, avirgin of the most exquisite beauty, and only fifteen years old, whowas martyred on the 1st of May 1383 on the mountain of S. Giovanni ofQuarona, with three wounds on her head and two on her throat,inflicted by a wicked stepmother who had a devil, and whose behestsshe had obeyed with such consummate sweetness that she had attainedperfection; on which, so invariably do extremes meet, she had to beput to death and made a martyr; and if we want to know more abouther, we can find it in the work that has been so elegantly writtenabout her by the most illustrious Father Castiglione Sommasco.Again, there was the famous miracle in 1333 of S. Maiolo in ValRassa, which is celebrated every year, and in virtue of which Pietro,only child of Viscount Emiliano, one of the three brothers who foughtagainst the heretics, was saved after having been carried off by aravenous wolf into the woods of Val Sorba as far as the fountainnamed after the rout which this same Count, when he afterwards grewup, inflicted upon the enemies of the valley in 1377; wherefore he isseen in an old picture of those times as a child in swaddling-clothesin the mouth of a wolf, and he gave the name of Fassola di S. Maioloto his descendants. Nor, as in private duty bound, can the worthyCanon forget -

"My own beloved chapel of St. Mary of the Snow, for whose honour andglory I have done my utmost, at the entrance of the Val Mastallone;for here on a fragment of ruined wall there grow at all times sundryflowers, even in the ice and snows of winter; wherefore I had thedistich set up where it may be now seen."

I have never seen it, but must search for it next time I go toVarallo. Torrotti presently says that the country being sterile, thepeople are hard pressed for food during two-thirds of the year; hencethey have betaken themselves to commerce and to sundry arts, withwhich they overrun the world, returning home but once or twice ayear, with their hands well filled with that which they havegarnered, to sustain and comfort themselves with their families; andtheir toil and the gains that they have made redound no little to theadvantage of the states of Milan and Piedmont. He again declaresthat they maintain their liberty, neither will they brook the leastinfringement thereon. And their neighbours, he continues, as well asthe dwellers in the valley itself, are interested in this; for here,as in some desert or peaceful wilderness, the noble families of Italyand neighbouring provinces have been ever prone to harbour in timesof war and trouble.

Then, later, there comes an account of a battle, which I cannot verywell understand, but it seems to have been fought on the 26th of July1655. The Savoyards were on their way to assist at a siege of Pavia,and were determined to punish the Valsesians en route; they had comeup from Romagnano to Borgosesia, when the Valsesians attacked them asthey were at dinner, and shot off the finger of a general officer whowas eating an egg; on this the battle became general, and theSavoyards were caught every way; for the waters of the Sesia had comedown in flood during the night. The Germans of Alagna, Rima, andRimella were in it, somehow, and those of Pregemella in the ValDobbia. I cannot make out whether the Pregemella people were Germansor merely people; either way, the German-speaking villages in the ValSesia appear to have been the same two hundred years ago as now. Imean, it does not seem that the German-speaking race extended lowerdown the valley then than now. But at any rate, the queen, orwhoever "Madama Reale" may be, was very angry about the battle.

"It is the custom," concludes our author, "in token of holycheerfulness (allegria spirituale) to wear a sprig of pine in the haton leaving the holy place, to show that the visitor has been there;for it has some fine pine trees. This custom was introduced in royalmerriment by Carlo Emmanuele I. He put a sprig in his hat, and wasimitated by all his court, and the ladies wore the same in theirbosom or in their hair. Assuredly it is one of the wonders of theworld to see here, amid the amenities and allurements of the country,especially during the summer season, what a continuous festa or holyfair is maintained. For there come and go torrents of men and womenof every nation under heaven. Here you shall see pilgrims andpersons in religion of every description, processions, prelates, andoften princes and princesses, carriages, litters, caleches,equipages, cavalcades accompanied by trumpeters, gay troops ofcavaliers, and ladies with plumes in their hats and rich apparelwherewithal to make themselves attractive; and at intervals you shallhear all manner of songs, concerts, and musical instruments, bothcivil and military, all done with a modest and devout cheerfulness ofdemeanour, by which I am reminded of nothing so strongly as of thewords of the Psalmist in the which he saith 'Come and see the worksof the Lord, for He hath done wonders upon earth.'"

It must have been something like our own Tunbridge Wells or Bath inthe last century. Indeed, one is tempted to think that if the seahad come up to Varallo, it must have been almost more like Margatethan Jerusalem. Nor can we forget the gentle rebuke administered onan earlier page to those who came neither on business nor fordevotion's sake, but out of mere idle curiosity, and bringing withthem company which the good Canon designates as scandalous. Maisnous avons change tout cela.

I have allowed myself to quote so freely from Torrotti, as thinkingthat the reader will glean more incidentally from these fragmentsabout the genius of Varallo and its antecedents than he would getfrom pages of disquisition on my own part. Returning to the Varalloof modern times, I would say that even now that the railway has beenopened, the pleasantest way of getting there is still over the Colmafrom Pella opposite Orta. I always call this road "the root," for Ionce saw it thus described, obviously in good faith, in the visitors'book at one of the inns in Varallo. The gentleman said he had found"the root" without any difficulty at Pella, had taken it all the wayto Varallo, and it was delicious. He said it was one of the finest"roots" he had ever seen, and it was only nine or ten miles long.

There were one or two other things in that book, of which, while I amabout it, I should like to deliver my mind. A certain man who wrotea bold round hand signed his name "Tom Taylor"--doubtless not thelate well-known art critic and dramatic writer, but some other personof the same name--in the visitors' book of the Hotel Leone d'Oro atOrta, and added the word "disgusted." I saw this entry, thencomparatively recent, in 1871, and on going on to the Hotel d'Italiaat Varallo, found it repeated--"Tom Taylor disgusted." The entriesin each case were probably aimed at the Sacro Monte, and not at theinn; but they grated on me, as they must have done on many otherEnglish visitors; and I saw with pleasure that some one had writtenagainst the second of them the following epigram, which is too neatnot to be preserved. It ran:-

"Oh wretched Tom Taylor, disgusted at Orta, At Varallo we find him disgusted again;The feeling's contagious, I really have caught a Disgust for Tom Taylor--he travels in vain."

Who, I wonder, was it who could fling off such an apt impromptu, andhow many more mute inglorious writers have we not who might doanything they chose if they would only choose to do anything at all?Some one else had written on an earlier page; -

1.

"While you've that which makes the mare goYou should stay at this albergo,

Bona in esse and in posseAre dispensed by Joseph Rossi.

2.

"Ask him and he'll set before yeVino birra e liquori,

Asti, Grignolino, SherryPrezzi moderati--very."

There was more, but I have forgotten it. Joseph Rossi was a famousold waiter long since retired, something like Pietro at the HotelRosa Rossa at Casale, whom all that country side knew perfectly well.This last entry reminds me of a somewhat similar one which I saw somefive and thirty years ago at the inn at Harlech; -

1.

[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]By this 'ere I mean to testify how very well they feed you.

It is a pity the art of writing such pleasing little poems should benow so generally neglected in favour of more ambitious compositions.Whatever brevity may be as regards wit it is certainly the soul ofall agreeable poetry.

But again to return to Varallo, or rather to the way of reaching itby the Colma. There is nothing in North Italy more beautiful thanthis walk, with its park-like chestnut-covered slopes of undulatingpasture land dotted about with the finest thatched barns to be foundoutside Titian. We might almost fancy that Handel had it in his mindwhen he wrote his divine air "Verdi Prati." Certainly no country canbe better fitted either to the words or music. It continues in fullbeauty all the way to Civiasco, where the carriage road begins thatnow goes down into the main road between Varallo and Novara, joiningit a mile and a half or so below Varallo.

Close to the point of juncture there is a chapel of singularlygraceful elegant design, called the Madonna di Loreto. To thischapel I will again return: it is covered with frescoes. Near itthere is an open triangular piece of grass land on which a murdererwas beheaded within the memory of persons still living. A wild oldman, who looked like an executioner broken loose from theflagellation chapel on the Sacro Monte, but who was quite tame andkind to us when we came to know him, told Jones and myself this lastsummer that he remembered seeing the murderer brought here andbeheaded, this being as close as might be to the place where themurder had been committed. We were at first rather sceptical, but oninquiry at Varallo found that there had been an execution here, thelast in the open country, somewhere about the year 1835.

From this spot two roads lead to Varallo; one somewhat circuitous byMantegna, a village notable for a remarkable fresco outside thechurch, in which the Virgin is appearing to a lady and gentleman asthey are lying both of them fast asleep in a large bed, with theirtwo dear little round heads on a couple of comfortable pillows. Thethree Magi in the very interesting frescoes behind the choir in thechurch of S. Abbondio at Como are, if I remember, all in one bed whenthe angel comes to tell them about the star, and I fancy they have astriped counterpane, but it is some time since I saw the frescoes; atany rate the angel was not a lady. We had often before seen theVirgin appear to a lady in bed, and even to a gentleman in bed, butnever before to a lady and a gentleman both in the same bed. She isnot, however, so much appearing to them as sitting upon them, and Ishould say she was pretty heavy. The fresco is dated 1641.

The other road is the direct one, and passes the old church of St.Mark, outside which there are some charming fifteenth-centuryfrescoes by nobody in particular, and among them a cow who, at theinstance of St. Mark, is pinning a bear or wolf to a tree in a mostresolute determined manner.

There are other frescoes on this church by the Varallese painterLuini (not to be confounded with Bernardino), but I do not rememberthem as remarkable.

Up to this point the two highest peaks of Monte Rosa are stillvisible when clouds permit; here they disappear behind nearermountains, and in a few more hundred yards Varallo is entered.

CHAPTER IV. BERNARDINO CAIMI, AND FASSOLA.

In geographical position Varallo is the most western city of NorthItaly in which painting and sculpture were endemic. Turin, Novara,Vercelli, Casale, Ivrea, Biella, Alessandria, and Aosta have noendemic art comparable to that of the cities east of Milan. Bergamo,Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, not to mention Venice and the citiesof the Friuli, not only produced artists who have made themselvespermanently famous, but are themselves, in their architecture andexternal features generally, works of art as impressive as any theycontain; they are stamped with the widely-spread instinctive feelingfor beauty with which the age and people that reared them mustassuredly have been inspired. The eastern cities have perhapssuffered more from war, nevertheless it is hard to think that thebeauty so characteristic of the eastern Lombardic cities should failso conspicuously, at least by comparison, in the western, if thegenius of the places had been the same. All cities are symptomaticof the men who built them, towns no less than bodily organisationbeing that unknown something which we call mind or spirit mademanifest in material form. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, andItalians--to name them in alphabetical order, are not more distinctin their several faults and virtues than are London, Paris, Berlin,and Rome, in the impression they leave on those who see them. Howclosely in each case does the appearance of the city correspond withthe genius of the nation of which it is the capital. The same holdsgood more or less with the provincial cities of any country. Theyhave each in a minor degree their distinctive evidences of character,and it will hardly be denied that while the North Italian genius isindebted to the cities of Piedmont for perhaps its more robust andvigorous elements, it owes its command of beauty whether of form orcolour to Lombardy rather than to Piedmont. It seems to have beenordained that an endemic interest in art should not cross the Ponorthward to the west of the Ticino, and to this rule Varallo is onlypartially an exception; the reasons which led to its being anexception at all will be considered presently. I know, of course,that Novara, and still more Vercelli, contain masterpieces byGaudenzio Ferrari, but in each case the art was exotic, and with thenot very noteworthy exceptions of Lanini, Difendente Ferrari diChivasso, and Macrino d'Alba, I do not at the moment call to mind thename of a single even high second-class painter or sculptor who hashailed from west of the Valsesia.

The exceptional position of Varallo as regards North Italian art mustbe referred mainly to its selection by Bernardino Caimi as the sitefor the New Jerusalem which he founded there at the end of thefifteenth century; a few words, therefore, concerning him will not beout of place here; I learn from Torrotti that he was a "Frate MinoreOsservante di S. Francesco," and came of the noble and illustriousMilanese family of the Counts Caimi. He had been Patriarch of theHoly Land, and, as I find stated in Signor Galloni's excellent workalready referred to, {1} had been employed on important missions inthe island of Cyprus, chiefly in connection with the reformation ofabuses. Full of zeal and devotion he returned to his native country,and ere long conceived the design of reproducing in Italy a copy ofthe most important sites in the Holy Land, for the comfort andgreater commodity of so many Christians who, being unable to committhemselves to long and weary voyages by land and sea, and amonginfidels, might gather thence some portion of that spiritual fruitwhich were otherwise beyond their reach.

Old and mendicant as he was, he was nothing daunted by the magnitudeof the task before him, and searched Lombardy from one end to theother in his desire to provide Providence with a suitable abode. Fora long while he sought in vain, and could find no place that wasreally like Jerusalem, but at last, towards the end of 1491, he cameto Varallo alone, and had hardly got there before he felt himselfrapt into an ecstasy, in the which he was drawn towards the SacroMonte; when he got up to the plain on the top of the mountain whichwas then called "La Parete," perceiving at once its marvellousresemblance to Jerusalem, even to the existence of another mountainhard by which was like Calvary, he threw himself on the ground andthanked God in a transport of delight. It is said that for some timepreviously the shepherds who watched their flocks on this solitaryheight had been talking of nothing but of heavenly harmonies that hadbeen heard coming from the sky; that Caimi himself while yet in theHoly Land had been shown this place in a vision; and that on reachingan eminence called Sceletta he had been conducted to the site itselfby the song of a bird which sang with such extraordinary sweetnessthat he had been constrained to follow it.

I should have set this bird down as a blue rock thrush or passerosolitario, for I know these birds breed yearly on the Sacro Monte,and no bird sings so sweetly as they do, but we are expressly toldthat Caimi did not reach Varallo till the end of the year, and thepasseri solitarii have all migrated by the end of August. We haveseen, however, that Milano Scarrognini actually founded a chapel inOctober 1491, so Torrotti is wrong in his date, and Caimi may havecome in 1490, and perhaps in August, before the passeri were gone.There can be little doubt in fact that he came, or at any rate chosehis site, before 1486.

Whatever the bird may have been, Caimi now communicated his design tothe Consiglio della Vicinanza at Varallo, through Milano de'Scarrognini, who was a member of the body, and who also gave supportin money; negotiations were not finally concluded until the 14th ofApril 1493, on which day, as we have already seen, the site of themonastery of S. Maria della Grazie was conveyed to the Padri dell'Osservanza with the concession of a right to build their NewJerusalem on the adjoining mountain--which they had already begun todo for some time past.

Divine assistance was manifest in the ease with which everything hadbeen arranged, but Torrotti goes on to assure us that it waspresently made still clearer. The design had been to begin with areproduction of the Holy Sepulchre, and hardly had the workmen begunto dig for the foundation of this first work, when a stone was found,not only resembling the one which covered the actual Holy Sepulchreitself, but an absolute facsimile of it in all respects--as like it,in fact, or even more so, than Varallo was to Jerusalem. Thetestimony to this was so notorious, and the fact was so soon andwidely known, that pilgrims flocked in crowds and brought giftsenough to bring the first abode of the Fathers with the chapel besideit to a speedy and successful completion. Everything having been nowstarted auspiciously, and the Blessed Bernardino having been allowedto look, as it were, into the promised land, God took him to Himselfon the 5th day of the Ides of February 1496, or--as I have above saidthat the inscription on Caimi's tomb declares--in 1499.

The churches, both the one below the mountain in which Gaudenzio'sgreat series of frescoes may be still seen, and the one on the top,which stood on the site now occupied by the large house that standsto the right of the present church, and is called the Casino, wereconsecrated between the 5th and 7th days of September 1501, and bythis time several of the chapels with figures in them had been takenin hand, and were well advanced if not completed.

Fassola's version of Bernardino Caimi's visit is more guarded thanTorrotti's is. Before going on to it I will say here the little thatneed be said about Fassola himself. I find from Signor Galloni's"Uomini e fatti" (p. 208) that he was born at Rassa above Bucioletoin the Val Grande, on the 19th of September 1648. His family had onehouse at Rassa, and another at Varallo, which last is believed tohave been what is now the hotel Croce Bianca, at which I alwaysmyself stay. Torrotti, in his preface, claims to have been one ofhis masters; he also says that Fassola was only eighteen when hewrote his work on the Sacro Monte, and that he had published a workwhen he was only fourteen. The note given by Signor Galloni [p. 233]settles it that Fassola was born "anno D. 1648 die 19 septembris hora22 min. 30," so that either the book lay some years unpublished, orhe was over twenty when he wrote it. Like the edition of Cacciaalready referred to, it is dated a year later than the one in whichit actually appeared, so that the present custom of post-dating lateautumn books is not a new one. In the preface the writer speaks ofhis pen as being "tenera non tanto per talento quanto per l'eta." Inthe same preface he speaks of himself as having a double capacity,one as a Delegate to the governing body of the valley, and the otheras a canon; but he must mean some kind of lay canon, for I cannotfind that he was ever ordained. In 1672 he published his work "LaValsesia descritta," which according to Signor Galloni is morehastily written than his earlier work. On the 14th of December, thesame year, he left the Valsesia and travelled to France, keeping ajournal for some time, which Signor Galloni tells us still existed in1873 in the possession of Abate Cav. Carestia of Riva Valdobbia. Hewent to Paris, and appears to have stayed there till 1683, when hereturned to Varallo, and the Valsesia.

He found his country torn by faction, and was immediately hailed byall parties as the one man whom all could agree to elect as RegentGeneral of the Valley. He was elected, and on the 5th of Octoberconvened his first general council of the Valsesia. He seems to havebeen indefatigable as an administrator during the short time he heldoffice, but in the year 1684 was deposed by the Milanese, who on the3rd of December sent a body of armed men to seize him and take him toMilan. He was warned in time to fly, and escaped to France, whereaccording to some he died, while others say that he settled in Polandand there attained high distinction. Nothing, however, is known forcertain about him later than the year 1684 or the beginning of 1685.

In 1686 Torrotti published his book. He says that Fassola during hisregency repeatedly desired him "ripigliare questa relatione percommodita dei Pelegrini, Divoti, visitanti," and that so much newmatter had come to light since Fassola's time that a new work wascalled for. Fassola, he says, even in the midst of his terriblemisfortunes, continued to take the warmest interest in his nativecity, and in the Sacro Monte, where it appears he had been saluted bya very memorable and well-known miracle, which was so well known inTorrotti's time that it was not necessary to tell us what it was.Fassola may or may not have urged Torrotti to write a second workupon the Sacro Monte, but he can hardly have intended him to make itlittle more than a transcript of his own book. If new facts had cometo light they do not appear in Torrotti's pages. He very rarely addsto Fassola, and never corrects him; when Fassola is wrong Torrotti iswrong also; even when something is added I have a strong suspicionthat it comes from Fassola's second book. On the whole I am afraid Iregard Torrotti as somewhat of a plagiarist--at least as regards hismatter, for his manner is his own and is very quaint, garrulous, andpleasing.

Fassola's work is full of inaccuracies, and of such inaccuracies ascan only be explained on the supposition that the writer residedmainly at Rassa, wrote his book there, and relied too much upon noteswhich he did not verify after his work was written. Nevertheless, asSignor Galloni justly says, "he must be allowed the merit of havingpreserved an immense mass of matter from otherwise almost certaindestruction, and his pages when subjected to rigid examination andcriticism furnish abundant material to the writer of genuinehistory."

He leans generally much less towards the miraculous than Torrottidoes. After saying, for example, that Bernardino Caimi had returnedfrom Jerusalem in 1481 full of devotion and with the fixed intentionof reproducing the Holy City on Italian soil, he continues:-

"With this holy intent the good ecclesiastic journeyed to themountains of Biella, and thence to the Val d'Ossola, and thence toseveral places in the Valsesia, which of all others was the valley inwhich he was most inclined to unburden his mind of the treasure ofhis heroic design. Finally, arriving at Varallo, as the place ofmost resort, where most of those would come whose means and goodwillwould incline them to works of piety, he resolved to choose the mostsuitable site that he could here find. According to some, whiletaking counsel with himself and with all who could help him, the sitewhich we now adore was shown him in a vision; others say that onwalking without the town he was seduced by the angelic warbling of abird, and thus ravished to a spot where he found all things in suchorder for his design that he settled upon it then and there. Manyhold as true the story of certain shepherds who about a fortnightearlier than the coming of the father, heard songs of more thanearthly sweetness as they were keeping watch over their flocks bynight."

"But," concludes Fassola, with some naivete considering the reservehe has shown in accepting any of the foregoing stories, "take it inwhatever way you will, the inception of the place was obviouslymiraculous."

CHAPTER V. EARLY HISTORY OF THE SACRO MONTE.

Whether miraculous or not, the early history of the Sacro Monte isundoubtedly obscure, and the reader will probably have ere thisperceived that the accounts given by Fassola and Torrotti stand insome need of reconstruction. The resemblance between Varallo andJerusalem is too far fetched to have had any bona fide effect upon aman of travel and of affairs, such as Caimi certainly was; it ishardly greater than the famous one between Monmouth and Macedon;there is, indeed, a river--not to say two--at Varallo, and there is ariver also only twenty-five miles off Jerusalem; doubtless at onetime or another there have been crucifixions in both, but some otherreason must be sought for the establishment of a great spiritualstronghold at the foot of the Alps, than a mere desire to find theplace which should most remind its founder of the Holy City. Whythis great effort in a remote and then almost inaccessible provinceof the Church, far from any of the religious centres towards whichone would have expected it to gravitate? The answer suggests itselfas readily as the question; namely, that it was an attempt to stemthe torrent of reformed doctrines already surging over many an Alpinepass, and threatening a moral invasion as fatal to the spiritualpower of Rome as earlier physical invasions of Northmen had been toher material power.

Those who see the Italian sub-alpine valleys of to-day as devoted tothe Church of Rome are apt to forget how nearly they fell away fromher in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what efforts,both by way of punishment and allurement, she was compelled to makebefore she could retain them in her grasp. In most of them theferment caused by the introduction of the reformed doctrines was inthe end stamped out; but in some, as in the Valle di Poschiavo, andthe Val Bregaglia, Protestantism is still either the predominantcreed or not uncommon. I do not mention the Vaudois valleys ofPiedmont, for I am told these were Protestant before either Huss orLuther preached.

The Valsesians had ere now given proof of a tendency towards heresy,but they were a people whom it was worth while making every effort toretain. They have ever been, as we have seen it said already, avigorous, sturdy, independent race, imbued, in virtue perhaps oftheir mixed descent, with a large share of the good points both ofSouthern and Northern nations. They are Italians; but Italians ofthe most robust and Roman type, combining in a remarkable degreeSouthern grace and versatility with Northern enterprise and power ofendurance. It is no great stretch of imagination to suppose thatBernardino Caimi was alive to dangers that were sufficiently obvious,and that he began with the Val Sesia, partly as of all the sub-alpinevalleys the one most imbued with German blood--the one in which tothis day the German language has lingered longest, and in which,therefore, ideas derived from Germany would most easily beestablished--and partly because of the quasi-independence of the ValSesia, and of its lying out of the path of those wars from which theplains of Lombardy have been rarely long exempt. It may be notedthat the movement set on foot by Caimi extended afterwards to otherplaces, always, with the exception of Crea, on the last slopes of theAlps before the plains of Lombardy and Piedmont begin. Varese,Locarno, Orta, Varallo, Oropa, Graglia, St. Ignazio, not to mentionSt. Giovanni di Andorno, have all of them something of the spiritualfrontier fortress about them, and, I imagine, are all more or lessdirectly indebted to the reformation for their inception.

Confining our attention to Varallo, the history of the Sacro Montedivides itself into two main periods; the first, from the foundationto the visit of S. Carlo Borromeo in 1678; the second, from the visitof S. Carlo to the present day. The first of these periods beginswith 1486, in which year the present Sacro Monte was no doubtformally contemplated, if not actually commenced. That it wascontemplated is shown by the inscription on Caimi's grave alreadygiven, and also by the first of the two deeds given in SignorGalloni's notes, from which it appears {2} that under the brief ofDecember 21, 1486, Caimi had powers to take over the land now coveredby the chapels, EVEN THOUGH HE SHOULD BE ABSENT--it being evidentlyintended that the land should be conveyed at once, and before hecould return from Jerusalem, for which place he started in 1487.Moreover, there remains one small chapel with frescoes that canhardly be later than 1485-1490. This is now numbered 45, and issupposed by many to be older even than Caimi's first visit. It maybe so, but there is nothing to show that it actually was. I haveseen a date scratched on it which it is said is 1437, but the four isreally a five, which in old writing is often taken for a four, andthe frescoes, which in their own way are of considerable merit, wouldbe most naturally assigned to about the date 1485-1490. I do notthink there can be a doubt that we have in this chapel the earliestexisting building on the Sacro Monte, but find it impossible to formany opinion as to whether it was in existence before BernardinoCaimi's time, or no.

In the second of the two deeds given by Signor Galloni (p. 85), thefollowing passage occurs:-

Neither Signor Galloni, who pointed out this passage to me, nor I,though we have more than once discussed the matter on the grounditself, can arrive at any conclusion as to what was intended by "thechapel now in existence under the cross," nor yet what chapel isintended by "the chapel of the Ascension on the said mountain." Itis probable that there was an early chapel of the Ascension, and thewooden figure of Christ on the fountain in the piazza before thechurch was very likely taken from it, but there is no evidence toshow where it stood.

Signor Arienta tells me that the chapel now occupied by theTemptation in the Wilderness was formerly a chapel of the Ascension.He told me to go round to the back of this chapel, and I should findit was earlier than appeared from the front. I did so, and saw ithad formerly fronted the other way to what it does now, but among themany dates scrawled on it could find none earlier than 1506, and itis not likely to have been built thirteen years before it gotscrawled on.

Some hold the chapels referred to in the deed above quoted from tohave included the present Annunciation, Salutation, and sleeping St.Joseph block--or part of it. Others hold them to have referred tothe chapels now filled by the Pieta and the Entombment (Nos. 40 and41); but it should not be forgotten that by 1493 the chapels of S.Francis and the Holy Sepulchre were already in existence, though nomention is made of them; and there may have been other chapels alsoalready built of which no mention is made. Thus immediately outsidethe St. Francis chapel and towards the door leading to the HolySepulchre, there is a small recess in which is placed an urn of ironthat contains the head of Bernardino Caimi with a Latin inscription;and hard by there is another inscription which runs as follows:-

We may say with some confidence that the present chapel No. 45, thosenumbered 40 and 41, the block containing the St. Francis and HolySepulchre chapels, and probably the Presepio, Adoration of theShepherds, and Circumcision chapels--though it may be doubted whetherthese last contained the figures that they now do--were in existencebefore the year 1500. Part if not all of the block containing theSta. Casa di Loreto, in which the Annunciation is now found, is alsoprobably earlier than 1500, as also an early Agony in the Garden nowlong destroyed, but of which we are told that the figures wereoriginally made of wood. Over and above these there was a Cena,Capture, Flagellation, and an Ascension chapel, all of whichcontained wooden figures, and cannot be dated later than the three orfour earliest years of the sixteenth century. No wooden figure is tobe dated later than this, for when once an oven for baking clay hadbeen made (and this must have been done soon after Gaudenzio took theworks on the Sacro Monte in hand) the use of wood was discarded neverto be resumed.

According to both Fassola and Torrotti, the first chapel erected onthe Sacro Monte was that of S. Francesco, with its adjacentreproduction of the Holy Sepulchre. According to Bordiga the firstwas the entombment, containing nine figures of wood, or, as theearlier writers say, eight. Bordiga probably means that theEntombment was the earliest chapel with figures in it, and the otherwriters that the St. Francis chapel was the first in which mass wassaid. These last speak very highly of the wooden figures in theEntombment chapel, and so more guardedly does Bordiga. I will returnto them when I come to the present group of nine by Luigi Marchesi, asculptor of Saltrio, which were substituted for the old ones in 1826.The early writers say that there was no fresco background to thischapel, and this suggests that the attempt to combine sculpture andpainting was not part of the initial scheme, though soon engrafted onto it, inasmuch as this is the only chapel about which I find itexpressly stated by early writers that it was without a frescobackground ("senza pittura alcuna"). {3} Though there was no frescobackground, Bordiga says there was a fresco painted, doubtless donevery early in his career, by Gaudenzio Ferrari, outside the chapeljust above the iron grating through which the visitor must look.Probably the original scheme was to have sculptured figures insidethe chapels, and frescoes outside; by an easy modification these lastwere transferred from the outside to the inside, and so designed asto form an integral part of the composition: the daring scheme ofcombining the utmost resources of both painting and sculpture in asingle work was thus gradually evolved rather than arrived at persaltum. Assuming, however, the currently received date of 1503 or1504 as correct for Gaudenzio's frescoes in the present Pieta chapel,the conception as carried out in the greater number of the existingchapels had then attained the shape from which no subsequentdeparture was made.

Returning to Gaudenzio's fresco outside the S. Francesco chapel,Bordiga says that Caccia gave the following lines on this work:-

The reader will note that the fresco is here expressly stated to be"di fuore" or outside and not inside the chapel.

Both Fassola and Torrotti place this fresco on the outside wall ofthe chapel of St. Francis, but Bordiga is probably right in saying itwas on the Entombment chapel. No trace of it remains, nor yet of theother works by Gaudenzio, which all three writers agree were in theS. Francesco chapel, though they must all have been some few yearslater than the chapel itself. These consisted of portraits of MilanoScarrognini with Father Beato Candido Ranzo Bernardino Caimi upon thegospel, or right, side of the altar, and of Scarrognini's wife andson with Bernardino Caimi, on the epistle side. According toBordiga, Gaudenzio also painted a St. Anthony of Padua, and a St.Helena, one on either side the grating. Inside the chapel over thealtar was a painting of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, also byGaudenzio. This is the only one of his works in or about the S.Francesco chapel which still exists; it is now in the pinacoteca ofthe Museum at Varallo, but is not, so far as I could judge of it, oneof his best pictures. The other works were in a decayed condition in1703, when they were removed, and the chapel was redecorated byFrancesco Leva, a painter of Milan.

The Crucifixion chapel of Gaudenzio Ferrari was begun and finishedbetween 1520 and 1530. 1 have found three excellently written datesof 1529 scrawled upon the fresco background. One of them, "1529 Die26 Octobre Johannes Antoninus," is especially clear, and the othertwo leave no doubt what year was intended. I have found no earlierdate, but should not be surprised if further search were moresuccessful. I may say in passing that it seemed to me as though someparts of the scar made by the inscription had been filled with paint,while others had certainly not--as though the work had been in partsretouched, not so very long ago. I think this is so, but two orthree to whom I showed what I took to be the new colour were notconvinced, so I must leave others to decide the point.

The Magi chapel must be assigned to some date between the years 1530and 1539--I should say probably to about 1538, but I will return tothis later on. Torrotti says that some of the figures on the Christtaken for the last time before Pilate (chapel No. 32) are byGaudenzio, as also some paintings that were preserved when thePalazzo di Pilato was built, but I can see no sign of either one orthe other now; nevertheless it is likely enough that several figures--transformed as we shall presently see that d'Enrico or hisassistants knew very well how to transform them--are doing duty inthe Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate, and Ecce Homo chapels. So cunningly didthe workmen of that time disguise a figure when they wanted to alterits character and action that it would be no easy matter to find outexactly what was done; if they could turn an Eve, as they did, into avery passable Roman soldier assisting at the capture of Christ, theycould make anything out of anything. A figure was a figure, and wasnot to be thrown away lightly.

Soon after the completion of the Magi chapel the work flagged inconsequence of the wars then devastating the provinces of NorthItaly; nevertheless by the middle of the sixteenth century we learnfrom Torrotti that some nineteen chapels had been completed.

It is idle to spend much time in guessing which these chapels were,when Caccia's work, published in 1565, is sure to be found some dayand will settle the matter authoritatively, but the reader will notbe far wrong if he sees the Sacro Monte by the year 1550 asconsisting of the following chapels: Adam and Eve, Annunciation,Salutation (?), Magi, Adoration of the Infant Jesus by the Shepherds,Adoration by Joseph and Mary, Circumcision, (but not the presentfigures nor fresco background), Last Supper, Agony in the Garden,Capture, Flagellation, Crowning with thorns (?), Christ taken for thelast time before Pilate, the Original journey to Calvary, FaintingMadonna, Crucifixion, Entombment, Ascension, and the old church ofthe Assumption of the Virgin Mary now removed. There were probablyone or two others, but there cannot have been many.

In the 1586 edition of Caccia, a MS. copy of which I have before me,the chapels are given as follows: Adam and Eve, Annunciation, andSanta Casa di Loreto, Visit of Mary to Elizabeth, Magi, Joseph andMary worshipping the Infant Christ, and the Adoration of Shepherds,{4} Circumcision, Joseph warned to fly, the chapel (but not thefigures) of the Massacre of the Innocents, Flight into Egypt Baptism,Temptation in the Wilderness, Woman of Samaria, the chapel (but notthe figures) of the Healing of the Paralytic, and the Raising of theWidow's son at Nain, the Raising of Lazarus, Entry of Christ intoJerusalem, the Last Supper, Agony in the Garden, Capture,Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, Christ carrying His cross toCalvary (doubtless Tabachetti's chapel), the Fainting of the Virgin,the earlier Journey to Calvary by Gaudenzio (now dispersed ordestroyed), Crucifixion, Pieta, Holy Sepulchre, Appearance to MaryMagdalene (now no longer existing).

I should say, however, that I find it impossible to reconcile the twoaccounts of the journeys to Calvary, given in the prose introductionto this work, and in the poetical description that follows it, orrather to understand the topography of the poetical version at all,for the prose account is plain enough. I shall place a MS. copy ofthe 1586 edition of Caccia's book in the British Museum, before thispresent volume is published, and will leave other students ofValsesian history to be more fortunate if they can. Poeticaldescriptions are so far better than prose, inasmuch as there isgenerally less of them in a page, but on the whole prose has theadvantage.

It would be interesting to see the 1565 and 1576 editions of Caccia,and note the changes and additions that can be found in them. Thedifferences between the 1586 and 1590 editions (dated 1587 and 1591-the preface to the second being dated September 25, 1589), are enoughto throw considerable additional light upon the history of the place,and if, as I believe likely, we find no mention of Tabachetti'sCalvary chapel in the edition of 1576, nor of his other chapels, weshould be able to date his arrival at Varallo within a very fewyears, and settle a question which, until these two editions ofCaccia are found, appears insoluble. I must be myself content withpointing out these libri desiderati to the future historian.

Some say that the work on the Sacro Monte was almost discontinuedbetween the years 1540 and 1580. I cannot, however, find that thiswas so, though it appears to have somewhat flagged. I cannot tellwhether Tabachetti came to Varallo before S. Carlo or after him. Ifbefore, then a good deal of the second impetus may be due to thesculptor rather than to the saint; if after, and as a consequence ofS. Carlo's visit, then indeed S. Carlo must be considered as thesecond founder of the place; but whatever view is taken about this,S. Carlo's visit in 1578 is convenient as marking a new departure inthe history of the Sacro Monte, and he may be fairly called itssecond founder.

Giussano gives the following account of his first visit, which makesus better understand the austere expression that reigns on S. Carlo'sface, as we see it represented in his portraits:-

"It was two o'clock in the day before St. Charles arrived at thisplace, and he had not broken his fast, but before taking anything hevisited the different chapels for meditation, of which Father Adornogave him the points. As evening drew on, he withdrew to take hisrefection of bread and water, and then returned again to the chapelstill after midnight though the weather was very cold" [end of Octoberor beginning of November]. "He then took two hours' rest on a chair,and at five o'clock in the morning resumed his devotions; then, afterhaving said his Mass, he again allowed himself a small portion ofbread and water, and continued his journey to Milan, renewed infervour of spirit, and with a firm determination to begin again toserve God with greater energy than ever." {5}

Surely one may add "according to his lights" after the words "toserve God." The second visit of St. Charles to Varallo, a few daysbefore his death, is even more painful reading, and the reader may bereferred for an account of it to chapter xi. of the second volume ofthe work last quoted from. He had a cell in the cloister, where heslept on a wooden bed, which is still shown and venerated, and usedto spend hours in contemplating the various sacred mysteries, butmost especially the Agony in the Garden, near which a little shelterwas made for him, and in which he was praying when his impendingdeath was announced to him by an angel. But this chapel, which wasnear the present Transfiguration Chapel, was destroyed and rebuilt onits present site after his death, as also the Cena Chapel, whichoriginally contained frescoes by Bernardino Lanini. It was on theSacro Monte that S. Carlo discharged his last public functions, afterwhich, feeling that he had taken a chill, he left Varallo on the 29thof October 1584, and died at Milan six days afterwards.

At S. Carlo's instance Pellegrino Pellegrini, called Tibaldi, made anew design for the Sacro Monte, which was happily never carried out,but which I am told involved the destruction of many of the earlierchapels. He made the plan of the Sacro Monte as it stood in histime, which I have already referred to, and designed the many chapelsmentioned in the 1586 edition of Caccia as about to be built.Prominent among these was the Temple of Solomon, which was to involve"una spesa grandissima," and was to be as like the real temple as itcould be made. Inside it were to be groups of figures representingChrist driving out those that bought and sold, and it was to have amagnificent marble portico.

The Palazzo di Pilato, which, as the name denotes, is devoted to thesufferings of Christ under Pontius Pilate, was actually carried out,though not till some years after S. Carlo's death, and not accordingto Pellegrini's design. It is most probable that the designer of thePalazzo di Pilato, and of the Caiaphas and Herod chapels as we nowsee them, was Giovanni d'Enrico. "It was in 1608," says Bordiga, {6}writing of the Santa Scala, which leads from the Crowning with Thornsto the Ecce Homo chapels, and which, one would say, must have beenone of the first things done when the Palazzo di Pilato was made,"that this work with its steps, exactly twenty-eight in number, wasbegun, according to the design obtained from Rome by Francesco Testa,who was then Fabbriciere. This is for the information of those whothink it is the work of Pellegrini."

Between this year and 1645 the four Pilate chapels, the Ecce Homo,Caiaphas, Herod, present Pieta, Sleeping Apostles, Agony in theGarden, and Christ Nailed to the Cross chapels were either created orreconstructed. These works bear d'Enrico's name in the guide-books,and he no doubt presided over the work that was done in them; but Ishould say that by far the greater number of the figures in them areby Giacomo Ferro, his assistant, to whom I will return presently, orby other pupils and assistants. Only one chapel, theTransfiguration, belongs to the second half of the seventeenthcentury, and one, the Christ before Annas, to the eighteenth (1765);one--the present Entombment--belongs to the nineteenth, and one ortwo have been destroyed, as has been unfortunately the case with theChiesa Vecchia; but the plan of the Sacro Monte in 1671, which I heregive, will show that it was not much different then from what it isat present. The numbers on the chapels are explained as follows:-

1. Gate.2. Creation of the world and Adam and Eve.3. Annunciation.4. Salutation.5. First vision of St. Joseph.6. Magi.7. Nativity.8. Circumcision.9. Second vision of St. Joseph.10. Flight into Egypt.11. Massacre of the Innocents.12. Baptism.13. Temptation.14. Woman of Samaria.15. Healing the Paralytic.16. Widow's son at Nain.17. Transfiguration.18. Raising of Lazarus.19. Entry into Jerusalem.20. Last Supper.21. Agony in the Garden.22. Sleeping Apostles.23. Capture.24. Caiaphas, and Penitence of St. Peter.25. Christ before Pilate.26. Christ before Herod.27. Christ sent again to Pilate.28. Flagellation.29. Crowning with thorns.30. Christ about to ascend the Santa Scala (not shown on plan).31. Ecce Homo.32. Pilate washes his hands.33. Christ condemned to death.34. Christ carrying the Cross.35. Nailing to the Cross.36. Passion.37. Deposition from the Cross.38. Pieta.39. Entombment (not shown on plan).40. Chapel of St. Francis.41. Holy Sepulchre.42. Appearance to Mary Magdalene.43. Infancy of the Virgin.44. Sepulchre of the Virgin.45. Sepulchre of St. Anne.46. Ascended Christ over the fountain.47. Chiesa Vecchia.48. Chiesa Maggiore.

The view is a bird's-eye one, and there is hardly any hill inreality.

CHAPTER VI. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.

The foregoing outline of the history of the work must suffice for thepresent. I will reserve further remarks for the space which I willdevote to each individual chapel. As regards the particular form thework took, I own that I have been at times inclined to wonder whetherLeonardo da Vinci may not have had something to do with it.

Between 1481 and the end of 1499 he was in Milan, and during thelater years of this period was the chief authority on all artmatters. It is not easy to think that Caimi, who was a Milanese,would not consult him before embarking upon an art enterprise of thefirst magnitude; and certainly there is a something in the idea ofturning the full strength of both painting and sculpture at once onto a single subject, which harmonises well with the magnificentrashness of which we know Leonardo to have been capable, and with thefact that he was both a painter and a sculptor himself. There is,however, not one scrap of evidence in support of this view, which isbased solely on the fact that both the scheme and Leonardo wereaudacious, and that the first is little likely to have beenundertaken without counsel from the second. The actual evidencepoints rather, as already indicated, in the direction of thinkingthat the frescoes began outside the chapels, got inside them forshelter, and ere long claimed the premises as belonging no less tothemselves than to the statues. The idea of treating full-reliefsculptured figures with a view to a pictorial rather thansculpturesque effect was in itself, as undertaken when Gaudenzio wastoo young to have had a voice in the matter, a daring innovation,even without the adjunct of a fresco background; and the idea oftaking a mountain as though it were a book, and illustrating it witha number of such groups, was more daring still. To this extent wemay perhaps suppose Caimi to have been indebted to Leonardo da Vinci:the rest is probably due to Gaudenzio, who evolved it in the courseof those unforeseen developments of which design and judgment arenever slow to take advantage.

To whomsoever the conception may be due, if it had only been carriedout by such artists as Tabachetti and Gaudenzio Ferrari, or evenGiovanni d'Enrico, to say nothing of Bargnola or Rossetti, (towhichever of the two the Massacre of the Innocents must be assigned,)works like those at Varallo might have been repeated, as indeed theysometimes were, thenceforward to the present day. Unfortunately thesame thing was attempted at Orta, and later on at Varese, by greatlyinferior men. It is true that some of the groups at Varese,especially the one in the Disputa Chapel, are exceedingly fine, andthat there are few chapels even there in which no good or evenadmirable figures may be found. Still the prevailing spirit atVarese is stagey; the work belongs to an age when art of all kindswas held to consist mainly in exaggeration, and when freedom fromaffectation had fallen into a disrepute from which it has takencenturies to emerge. Nevertheless the work at Varese is for the mostpart able; if at times somewhat boisterous and ranting, it isincomparably above the feeble, silly cant of Orta; but unfortunatelyit is by Orta that English people for the most part judge the attemptto combine sculpture and painting. It is indeed some years since Iwas at this last-named place, and remembering how long I knew theSacro Monte at Varallo without observing the Vecchietto in theDescent from the Cross Chapel, I cannot be sure that there is notsome more interesting work at Orta than I now know. I do not think,however, I am far wrong in saying that the chapels at Orta are forthe most part exceedingly bad.

So are some even at Varallo itself, but assuredly not most of them.One--I mean, of course, Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary, whichcontains about forty figures rather larger than life, and ninehorses,--is of such superlative excellence as regards composition anddramatic power, to say nothing of the many admirable individualfigures comprised in it, that it is not too much to call it the mostastounding work that has ever been achieved in sculpture. I knowthat this is strong language, but have considered my words as much asI care to do. As Michael Angelo's Medicean Chapel errs on the sideof over-subtlety, refinement, and the exaggerated idealism from whichindeed there is but one step to the barocco, so does Tabachetti's onthat of over-downrightness, or, as a critic with a cultivated eyemight say, with perhaps a show of reason at a first glance, even ofvulgarity. Nevertheless, if I could have my choice whether to havecreated Michael Angelo's chapel or Tabachetti's, I should not for amoment hesitate about choosing Tabachetti's, though it drove itsunhappy creator mad, which the Medicean chapel never did by MichaelAngelo. Three other chapels by Tabachetti are also admirable works.Two chapels contain very extensive frescoes by Gaudenzio Ferrari,than which it is safe to say that no finer works of their kind havebeen preserved to us. The statues by Gaudenzio in the same chapelsare all interesting, and some remarkably good. Their arrangement inthe Crucifixion Chapel, if not marked by the superlative dramaticpower of Tabachetti, is still solemn, dignified, and impressive. Thefrescoes by Morazzone in Tabachetti's great chapel belong to thedecline of art, but there is still much in them that is excellent.So there is in some of those by Tanzio and Melchiorre, Giovannid'Enrico's brothers. Giovanni d'Enrico's Nailing of Christ to theCross, with its sixty figures all rather larger than life, challengesa comparison with Tabachetti's, which it will not bear; still it is agreat work. So are several of his other chapels. I am not sothoroughly in sympathy with the work of any of the three brothersd'Enrico as I should like to be, but they cannot be ignored or spokenof without respect. There are excellent figures in some of thechapels by less well-known men; and lastly, there is the Vecchietto,perhaps the finest figure of all, who looks as if he had droppedstraight from the heavens towards which he is steadfastly regarding,and of whom nothing is known except that, if not by Tabachetti, hemust be by a genius in some respects even more commanding, who hasleft us nothing save this Melchizedek of a figure, without father,mother, or descent.

I have glanced at some of the wealth in store for those who willexplore it, but at the same time I cannot pretend that even thegreater number of the chapels on the Sacro Monte are above criticism;and unfortunately some of the best do not come till the visitor, ifhe takes them in the prescribed order, has already seen a good many,and is beginning to be tired. There is not a little to be said infavour of taking them in the reverse order. As when one has sampledseveral figures in a chapel and found them commonplace, one is apt tooverlook a good one which may have got in by accident of shifting insome one of the several rearrangements made in the course of morethan three centuries, so when sampling the chapels themselves, afterfinding half a dozen running which are of inferior merit, we approachthe others with a bias against them. Moreover, all of them havesuffered more or less severely from decay. Rain and snow, indeed,can hardly get right inside the chapels, or, at any rate, not insidemost of them, but they are all open to the air, and, at a height ofover two thousand feet, ages of winter damp have dimmed the gloryeven of the best-preserved. In many cases the hair and beards, withexcess of realism, were made of horse hair glued on, and the glue nowshows unpleasantly; while the paint on many of the faces and dresseshas blistered or peeled, leaving the figures with a diseased andmangy look. In other cases, they have been scraped and repainted,and this process has probably been repeated many times over, withinevitable loss of character; for the paint, unless very carefullyremoved, must soon clog up and conceal delicate modelling in manyparts of the face and hands. The new paint has often been of ashiny, oleaginous character, and this will go far to vulgarise even afinely modelled figure, giving it something of the look of aHighlander outside a tobacconist's shop. I am glad to see thatProfessor Burlazzi, in repainting the Adam and Eve in the firstchapel, has used dead colour, as was done by Tabachetti in hisJourney to Calvary. As the figures have often become mangy, so thefrescoes are with few exceptions injured by damp and mould. Theexpense of keeping up so many chapels must be very heavy; it issurprising, therefore, that the general state of repair should be asgood as it is. Nevertheless, there is not a chapel which does notrequire some effort of the imagination before the mind's eye can seeit as it was when left by those who made it.

Unless the reader feels equal to this effort,--and enough remains tomake it a very possible one--he had better stick to the Royal Academyand Grosvenor Exhibitions. It should go without saying that a workof art, if considered at all, must be held to be as it was when firstcompleted. If we could see Gaudenzio Ferrari's Crucifixion Chapelwith its marvellous frescoes as strong and fresh in colour as theywere three centuries and a half ago, and with its nearly thirty life-sized human figures and horses in good condition--not forgettingthat, whatever Sir Henry Layard may say to the contrary, they are allby one hand; if, again, Tabachetti's great work was seen by us as itwas seen by Tabachetti, and Morazzone's really fine background werenot disfigured by damp and mildew, it can hardly be doubted that even"a cultivated eye" would find little difficulty in seeing these twochapels as among the very finest triumphs that have been vouchsafedto human genius; and surely, if this be so, it follows that we shouldrate them no lower even now. Gaudenzio Ferrari's Crucifixion Chapel,regarded as a single work, conceived and executed by a single artist,who aimed with one intention at the highest points ever attained bothby painting and sculpture, and who wielded on a very large scale, inconnection with what was then held to be the sublimest and mostsolemn of conceivable subjects, the fullest range of all theresources available by either, must stand as perhaps the mostdaringly ambitious attempt that has been made in the history of art.As regards the frescoes, the success was as signal as the daring; andeven as regards the sculpture, the work cannot be said to havefailed. Gaudenzio the sculptor will not indeed compare withGaudenzio the painter; still less will he compare with Tabachettieither as a modeller or composer of full-relief figures; butTabachetti did not paint his own background as well as make hisfigures, and something must always be allowed to those who arecarrying double. Moreover, Tabachetti followed, whereas Gaudenzioled as pioneer in a realm of art never hitherto attempted.Nevertheless, I may be allowed to say that, notwithstanding allGaudenzio's greatness, I find Tabachetti the strongest and mostrobust of all the great men who have left their mark on the SacroMonte at Varallo.

We cannot dismiss such works with cheap commonplaces about MadameTussaud's--and for aught I know there may be some very good stuff atMadame Tussaud's--or sneer at them as though they must be all much ofa muchness, and because the Orta chapels are bad, therefore those atVarallo must be so also. Those who confine themselves to retailingwhat they take to be art-tips gathered from our leading journals ofculture, will probably continue to trade on this not very hardlyearned capital, whatever may be urged upon the other side; but thosewho will take the trouble involved in forming an independent judgment